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Month December 2010

Most of the enlightened brands today stopped doing “Ads” and started doing “Acts”, Ads usually chest thump about how good they are and propagate their superiority in all media channels. Acts on the other hand are the deeds brands do in public domains and are neutral to paid media channels or they put up their act in real life rather than communicate through paid mediums.

Brands today try to behave in a selfless manner and propagate certain values to emotionally connect with like-minded people, like Tata tea never asks you to buy its branded tea instead urges you to be awakened to the responsibilities of a citizen. This action or the behavior of a brand makes you want to connect and live alongside.

Human like behavior of a brand is what Leo Burnett terms as “HumanKind Brand”, brands are trying to find its purpose of existence in people’s lives so that they can play a meaningful role and become a part.

Thus to make this journey possible brands can’t fake things as fake friends are not difficult to spot, they need to be honest and earnest therefore they must “Act” the way they promise.

Now you know the power of ‘Acts” here are some powerful and earnest “Acts” put-up by Indian Brands in 2010:

Gillette “Shave India movement”- by women against lazy stubble.

Women prefer “clean-shaven men” is a universal truth. Men are dumb and they never get it, they all want to look macho by sporting a stubble. This insight had led to an inspired “Act” of “Shave India Movement”

Around November last year “Shave India movement”- by women against lazy stubble was announced and launched by sexy sirens of Bollywood: Neha Dhupia, Manisha Lamba and Mugdha Godse forcing men to get shaved, thousands of women joined soon in the protest against men with stubble. Television and social media transmitted the idea like wildfire, soon shaving camps were organized, media started ridiculing men with stubble forcing them to shave, in the midst of all this Gillette launched its cheaper Mach-3 razor for 125 rupees.

Bravo BBDO, Mediacom and Proctor & Gamble!

Hippo “Crowd Sourcing” on twitter.

Creativeland Asia and Parle Agro had an innovative solution for a complex distribution problem, they appealed to the tweeters to report to them if they have not found “Hippo” in the neighborhood shop and promised to make it available in an hour’s time. Curious tweeters reported and participated in the drill actively making the brand more fun and inclusive.

This cleaver “Act” not just saved the brand’s distribution or inventory problem but also created a bond with the consumers and made a statement to the young social media audience how innovative, young and agile they are!

“Aman ki Asha” an Initiative by Times of India & Jung Group Pakistan.

What can one say to an ‘Act” like this? Mahatma Gandhi would have been proud. Two nations have been fighting bitter wars since 1947 while the majority of the people in both the nations want to live in peace and harmony. Two huge newspapers take plunge of propagating peace in the midst of terror and distrust. Teachers, artist, businessmen, filmmakers, intellectuals, poets, actors, scientist and commoners all came together to exchange ideas and peace messages.

This “Act” I believe had re-kindled the love and affection this two nations once shared.

Virgin Mobile: “Indian Panga League”

When you want to be young and happening what do you do? Simple. You behave like one. Virgin had a choice of hiring a lesser cricketing star and do a conventional 30 seconds spot or think little different. They chose to do the later and took the trouble of going the extra mile by behaving little “hutke”.

Indian Panga League is launched for the IPL session-3 is a complete digital campaign with 100 viral films on YouTube and the website, allowing young fans to take friendly pangas with their buddies supporting rival teams, this generated huge participation on the micro site over 1 million visitors, 500,000 views on YouTube and 3000 fans on Facebook. Bates and Virgin’s choice proved to be the right one, young janta went berserk.

Gandhiji Font.

To commemorate Mahatma Gandhi’s 141 birthday, Leo Burnett had decided to create a special font designed from his iconic spectacles to enable a young nation to see Mahatma’s vision. This “Act” will take wings, once the ambitious project get into top gear by launching the font in all 16 Indian languages, currently Devnagari, English, Marathi and Telugu are available awaiting for a symbolic gesture of dedicating to the nation by The Government of India.

The ambition of this project is to make mahatma’s vision relevant to younger generation especially by using digital space to connect.

In the land of Mahatma Gandhi the “Act of Acts” is no new discovery, the symbolic “Salt Production” was an “Act” to bring behavioral change, so is non-co-operative movement. Imagine Bapu trying to explain the significance of freedom in a long copy ad than to a metaphoric act of salt making”